FiiO JadeAudio KA1 Headphone Amps Tiny Amplifier USB DAC High Resolution Lossless for Smartphones/PC/Laptop/Players(Lightning, Black)

This tiny little thing has big sound. I’m fairly new to being a budget audio file, so the only other dac I have to compare this to is the audioquest dragonfly black. This for $65.00 less actually has a better sound signature and soundstage. I would say the amp part of the ka1 is a bit less robust than the dragonfly, but only slightly. The dragonfly actually is a bit too loud and the ka1 is much louder than the normal apple dongle, which is plenty imo. The ka1 is so small, that I’m AMAZED at the sound quality from this thing. If you’re on a budget this is the BEST DAC/Amp you can buy. I’m an audio technica guy, so I’ve been using the M series and the ART series with this. Battery consumption is fairly low as well. Also, I’ve seen a few people say that a budget dongle at $15.95 sounded better, and to them I say to you get your hearing checked. The ka1 is awesome!!!

Along with the GK Ultraphones this is just what the Drum Doctor ordered ! It turns the iPhone into I raging powerful receiver! Crystal Clear oomph to boot and an amazing sound quality that surpasses the small investment! I’m not kidding about this! I’m blown away! It comes charged up so open with care and plug it in to your phone then plug the end of your favorite headphones (if you are a drummer and don’t have the GK Ultraphones, stop what you’re doing and order a set) and no looking back! Just play along with your favorite music and tune out the rest of the world for a while! There’s no better combo at this investment level on the planet! 🎩

At first I wasn’t sure what to expect since all my life I’ve only used Bluetooth headphones and of course those are compressed to an extent. I have used wired headphones on older devices but of course lossless wasn’t a thing back then on mobile devices religiously. So listening wired music on MP3 was sufficient to my young ears but growing up I got into music more and the quality of the tracks. I currently use this on my car audio system and the sound is phenomenal. I have a friend who is an audiophile and he says this passes the sound check he desires. It’s so clear but it’s mostly because I use TIDAL as my music streaming service but I’d definitely recommend this if you use TIDAL. The audio is ALMOST similar to CD.

I recently purchased a pair of Linsoul KZ ZS10 Pro 2 IEMs which have so far impressed me for the price. I wanted to use them with my iPhone 13 Pro for commuting but only had an old Belkin Rockstar adapter I bought a while ago. It’s a bit bulky and was not really aimed for hifi use so I figured I could get more out of the iem’s with something like this. I don’t listen to any flac, MCQ or other lossless sources, just the highest available on Spotify. This Fiio KA1 has excellent build quality and is just the right size for portability. I don’t think the cable will ever be an issue with normal usage. That said, I pretty much immediately noticed some small distortion and muddled audio compared to the belkin adapter. It was most noticeable with bass at all volumes. I won’t say it sounded like AM radio, but it was not at all what I expected and considering the price for the KA1, it’s just not worth it. Unless you really need MQA, I would probably stick with Belkin or another cheaper adapter. I only used it for 30 min or so, but as others have mentioned it looks like it does take a hit on battery life. One thing I’ll note is that my iem’s are pretty sensitive and perhaps this is more aimed at larger cans with higher impedance. Audio can be subjective and everyone has their own preferences so take this review with as much salt as needed.

Title says it all. Music from my iPhone sounds great coming through this, I love how small it is, it’s got great build quality for the most part. It’s super. But the cable it has is just a loose collection of individual wires twisted around one direction. If you grab one end and spin it the opposite way, the wires all separate from one another and it becomes looser. Sure it’ll spring back but won’t be quite as tight as it should be. And the unfortunate thing is, that sort of twisting can happen accidentally when you put it in or take it out of your pocket. Wish they didn’t have to get fancy with the cable, or if they did if they could have encased it in silicone or epoxy or something to prevent unraveling.

Don’t let yourself get fooled into thinking you need a dac adapter in order to play Hifi on your phone, a regular dongle is perfectly fine (yes, even for playing flacs), in fact this has less functionality than a regular dongle (at least on ios). After two days of owning this the firmware corrupted, and there is 0 ways to reinstall it on ios (currently) so you have to use an android or windows device to fix it if this happens. The ios fiio app is also completely useless when it comes to tweaking ANY settings since it only has settings for bluetooth fiio dacs, even though the android version can and does have settings for the KA1. Also, the KA1 does not support mic passthrough on ios (even though it can on android) so if you have an iphone you better hope you never need to make any calls while you use this. It also consumes a lot of power, it is my fault for not anticipating it, but my phone loses battery far, FAR quicker than I expected, while in use I get about a third of the time I usually get out of my phone (iphone 14) before I need to charge it again. And even though I have been as careful as I possibly could be, since this costs so much for what it does, the cable broke after two months. Regular 3.5mm to lightning dongles can (somehow) do more than this for a quarter (or less!) of the price of this. I can confidently say this has been my absolute worst purchase when it comes to audio products, and I feel like a sucker for falling for the lies that the phone dac/amp industry has sold me.

Hace dos años compré unos audífonos de diadema Audio-technica M40x para usar con mi iphone. Si bien la calidad del sonido que se tiene cuando se usan con el adaptador del conector lighting es buena, con el uso de este DAC se ha mejorado mucho la calidad del sonido y se pueden escuchar detalles que de otra forma no se perciben, además de que la separación de canales es muy buena. Claro, existen DAC's de mejor rendimiento, pero su precio es más elevado. También he probado el DAC con unos audifonos "in-ear" Shure y el rendimiento es muy semejante al que se tiene con los de diadema. Cabe aclarar que si la idea es utilizar el DAC para mejorar lo que se escucha en spotify quizá no valga la pena porque la compresión de audio que usa spotify no permite sacarle provecho al DAC.

Fantastic sound when paired with my Audio Technica head phones. For a low cost DAC, this baby does the job.

Si tienes un iphone y quieres oir música de calidad decente con auriculares decentes, tienes que hacerte con un dac como éste. Viene con un adaptador usb a, yo le he añadido un adaptador usb a a usb c (en amazon hay baratos y buenos) y también me sirve para el ipad, que tiene usb. El resultado es poder escuchar la música en hi res (si tienes una fuente, yo tengo qobuz) y aunque la escuches en calidad cd, la mejora, respecto al dac de apple, es notable

Fyller alla funktioner som jag förväntat mig, väldigt liten och kompakt, lyfter mina Sennheiser hörlurar bra.

Incredible sound staging and detail for the price. This little guy may not have much to offer in extra features like physical controls, multiple outputs, etc, but he more than makes up for it by breathing fresh life into your music. If you're used to Bluetooth audio, the result is so much more warmth, less artificial crispness, and a more airy and open sound. It absolutely tramples $10 Apple headphone adapters or most phones' internal headphone jack. Yes, it can do Hi Res and bitrates, but even with standard Lossless 44.1khz/16bit recordings, it gives so much more life and vibrancy to playback. That's a pretty hard thing to measure but it is absolutely noticeable if your brain loves audio details as much as mine does. I'd definitely consider getting a couple more, and one for USB-C for my laptop. I tested the Lightning version with Apple Music streaming Lossless and Hi-Res tracks over WI-FI.

Lo use para uso en el auto,me sorprendió lo bien que se escucha

Bon produit et très bonne qualité audio point petit bémol après un an le câble a été fortement sollicité et j'ai dû en racheter un